The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga) (29 page)

“So, no problems sticking to our cover?”  Pete asked her.

“Nope. She was much more interested in telling me about her.”

“Pawley seemed to take it in stride too. We’ll see if it comes up again when we go flying.”

“If who goes flying?”

“You and I and Pawley, sweetheart. We’re taking him to
Andros
Monday.”

“What the hell for? There’s nothing there. Is there?”

“Not all that much that I know of. Anyway, he didn’t say.”

Linda’s patience, short at the best of times, was exhausted. “Then what the hell did he say? I hope you told him it’d be a day’s charter.”

“I did. What’s twenty-five hundred bucks to a guy like that?”

“Are we going to put down, or just turn around and come back? And if we are putting down, land or water?”

“Didn’t say. If I didn’t know better-  hell, I don’t know better-  I’d say there’s a good chance that this is an audition.”

“Audition? For what?”

“Remember what he said last night?”  said Jack, moving up to one of the limo’s jump seats. “That he’d pay just about anything to remove Castro? This guy’s been around, and he doesn’t fool around, either. He’s probably planning some kind of mission into
Cuba.”

“That,” Pete said, “will cost him considerably more than twenty-five hundred a day. Jack.”

“Hm.”

“You’re seeing Clare tomorrow, aren’t you?

“Yep. She’s got an early morning flight back on Saturday, so we thought we’d play around tomorrow and I’d get her back to Pawley’s for an early bedtime.”

“Bringing her back to the house?”

“No, don’t want to inconvenience you guys, particularly with the Pawley thing coming up on Monday. I booked a suite over at the Clay in
South
Beach. Nice, but off the beaten track; she’s not that eager to be recognized, and it’s pretty unlikely in
Spanish
Village.”

“Well, how about seeing what else you can get out of her concerning old Bill. He’s a great potential ally for us down here, with respect to
Cuba
or otherwise. This guy knows aviation, among other things, pretty much from the ground up.”

“And Jack,” Linda put in. “Don’t wear that old lady out, will you?”

There it is again, he thought. The look. The switch hitter special. “No chance,” he said. “I just hope we’re all fucking like that when we’re her age.”

Linda laughed. “Well, just you leave Eleanor be,” she said. She might as well have said, “I’ll spot you one before you leave town.”

By the time Jack had changed and come up on the sun deck, he had his choice between two conversations. Pawley and Pete had their heads together, neither of them smiling, and Linda and Clare had found something to laugh about. He chose the women, feeling a spark of irrational pride that he was the only one of the three men that had made love to both of them.

20 DOUBLE-CHEK

In his Flying Tiger jacket, threadbare khakis and battered baseball cap, Bill Pawley cut quite a different figure than he had last week as master of the Flying Tiger II. He, no doubt, felt much the same about Linda and Pete, turned out as they were in their customary flying gear. “Good morning, Mr. Pawley,” Linda said as he approached them at the hangar office door.

Smiling as they shook hands, Pawley said, “Now honey, I thought we had that all worked out last Thursday. I’m Bill, and you two’re Linda and Pete. Y’all ready to go flyin’?”

“Raring to go,” said Linda, returning his smile, “and so’s the aircraft. But all that we know so far is that we’re headed to
Andros, returning here. Would you like to give us a little fuller brief before we take off?”

Pawley flashed her a broad grin. “Pete told me that you were president of FlxAir, and that he was chief pilot. I like that, because business and aviatin’ can get at cross purposes, and if you don’t keep the business side straight you won’t have a business for all that long. But I understand that you’re a rated pilot, too.”

“Yes, I am,” Linda responded, not addressing the fact that she hadn’t flown her multi-engine or type rating checks, and wouldn’t until late June. “And although Jack’s about to start flight training in the Navy, he has a commercial ticket too. Pete told you how Jack came to be a partner in FlxAir, didn’t he?”

“He sure did. That’s some story; you bought that limousine over there-   which is a handsome thing, by the way-  after seeing it in a magazine ad, he drove it down, y’all gee-hawed, and asked him in as a partner.”

“And for several good reasons,” Linda told him. “I guess you might say that
Providence
was working overtime. Jack grew up with aviation; his uncle’s a retired World War II Naval Aviator turned crop duster after he retired. He had another aviator friend who died in an aircraft accident. This man happened to be the principal stockholder in a sizable beer distributorship up in Georgia, a onetime partner of Jack’s grandfather, and he named Jack as his sole heir. Jack had no interest in being in the beer business, so he sold out. He was looking for a startup company to invest in, preferably in aviation, and after we told him our story and took him flying, he made the decision to join us. Then, a few weeks after that, he got his draft notice, and decided to follow in his uncle’s footsteps and go to
Pensacola. He offered to sell his stock back to us for what he paid for it, but we’re taking the long view because he’s a terrific person, and he’ll add a lot to the company’s operations when his Navy hitch is over.”

“Well, having met him, I’m certain that you made the right decision. Clare told me the story about how they met, and just a wee bit about you folks, all she knew at that time. I think you’re right, Linda;
Providence
is smiling over our gettin’ together. Where is ol’ Jack, anyway? Is he gonna fly with us today?”

“No, Bill, it’ll just be the three of us. We decided that until we are a lot bigger than we are right now, we shouldn’t all be in the same plane at the same time. Jack did ask us to tell you how much he enjoyed meeting you, and to thank you for your generous hospitality. He’ll be driving back to Georgia soon to make his final arrangements before going to Pensacola, and one of the things he had to do was get his car serviced, which is where he is right now.”

“That’s very gracious; he’s a fine young gentleman, and I look forward to seeing him on his next trip. I imagine that he’ll get some leave during the Christmas holidays. Well. Guess we better look to what passes for our flight plan; I know you guys have got all the right aero charts for the area, but I brought a nautical chart along.”

“Sounds like you want to make a water landing down there,” Pete said.

“I’d like to, weather and your judgment permitting. Ever hear of
Williams
Island?”

“No. Is it part of
Andros?

“Just off the west coast, at the westernmost point. Do you have a dinghy?”

“Four-man inflatable. You want to go ashore?”

“No, just thinking of general safety. Whether to land or not’ll be your decision, but if we do it’ll be nice to have if any problems should come up. Is there a table in the office where we can spread the chart out?”

23 June 1959

Dear Lieutenant Dogface-

Congratulations! Wish I could salute you in person. Would’ve gotten back to you sooner, but I was busy getting my hair skinned off to the scalp and being run around the Station, double-time, by a couple of bordering-on-humorless Marine DIs and a handful of my peers, AOC “officers” in their last week of preflight. They get a whole week of pretend officerhood before they become real ones, “supervising” me and the rest of class 23-59, and I hope that when my turn rolls around I’ll act more like an officer and less like an imitation DI. Guess you dealt with a little of that yourself before being elevated to your current high station.

And now infantry school, huh? Doesn’t exactly sound like a walk in the park. And right on the heels of OCS. Well, if you weren’t a squared-away motherfucker already, you damn sure will be by the time you’re done with that. Looks like I’ll be pretty busy myself for the next four months or so, based on what I’ve seen and heard so far. After a week in the Indoctrination Battalion, better known as Indoc, we moved into 2nd Battalion, one of two two-story “splinterville” shacks around the corner that’ll be our home until we’re commissioned or washed out to spend the balance of two years as a “white hat,” your garden-variety enlisted man.

I’m sitting in the sole social amenity provided by the US Naval School of Preflight, the Aviation Cadet Recreation and Athletic Club, better known as the ACRAC. After a week of 14-hour days of Indoc’s purgatory, beer, Fritos and pool are pretty damn high living! They keep it open until 11 on weeknights, but it’s pretty well thinned out by 10, most everybody more interested in sleep than in getting sloshed. That’ll have to wait for the weekend, which doesn’t actually start until we’re done with the weekly graduation parade on Saturday morning, when those who’ve prevailed get their little gold bars pinned on.

Just to keep us interested, each class has its academic/military/physical progress evaluated vis-à-vis that of the other 15 classes over three five-week competition periods, the high-scoring battalion getting a 48-hour pass for the weekend. Each of the periods culminates in a Friday night “smoker” in the Athletic Building, featuring a boxing card of three-round matches (one-minute rounds), fought by volunteers from our ranks. As you can imagine, I’ll be one of them there intrepid volunteers, because ALL the fighters get a 48-hour pass, whether they’re from the winning battalion or not. Easy pickins? We’ll see, but with normal liberty expiring at
midnight, a 48’s a 48, and nobody can do that much damage in three minutes, thanks to the headgear and big gloves.

I imagine you’ll be right busy with the infantry bit, so I won’t be that surprised if I don’t hear from you until it’s over. Can’t wait to hear what it’s like, though, so drop me a line when you can. I’ve got the winner of this hot game of nine-ball that I’ve been tracking out of the corner of my eye, so I’ll close for the moment and freshen up this can of suds. So saying, I remain,

Jack (a.k.a. “Mr. Bright Boy” by Sergeant Velasco, Senior DI, an insightful judge of men)

The Flying Tiger II swung gently on one of the outer moorings of the Fontainebleau Hotel’s anchorage. Bill Pawley was alone on the boat, having sent his captain and three-man crew ashore with instructions to return in two hours. Sitting in the cockpit with a tall scotch and soda, he scanned a slowly-moving field of view of better than 180 degrees. Similarly, his thoughts swung over a crazy-quilt of considerations, most of them directly related to just how quickly the bandit Castro might be eliminated.

One important factor in his own still-embryonic plan for doing so was the infiltration of a string of weapons specialists, saboteurs and assassins onto the island. Out of the various options-  parachute, speedboat and amphibious aircraft-  he found himself more convinced by the day that the latter was by far the best choice. Relatively fast and quiet, superior payload and, operated in dusk or dawn hours in the right spots, an amphibian like the Albatross stood a pretty good chance of getting in and out without being spotted. He’d already come to this conclusion before his chance meeting with the FlxAir people, who had recently proven their mettle as aviators during the test mission to Williams Island. Wessel’s control of the Albatross was superior in all respects, and besides his attractive copilot, he has a backup crew member whose qualifications are, if anything, better than his own, at least in terms of hours in the aircraft. Something about Wessel, though, was uncannily reassuring; although he’d volunteered no information, there was no question in Pawley’s mind that this guy had seen his share of combat. He’d seen that special look in the eye of combat pilots all over the world.

Pawley, however, wasn’t about to take on a country the size of
Pennsylvania
with a single aircraft and a handful of people. Tactics, anyway weren’t his strong point. I’m a planner, expediter, salesman and, God help me, a politician, he thought. I need to get on board a big enough effort to remove that bearded bastard quickly, and contribute where best I can. Which is why I’m sitting here, waiting on the guy whom I hope can shed some light on what Dick Nixon and the Company are going to do.

He’d drained his glass and was on his feet for a refill when he heard the staccato bark of a muffled, but still muscular, engine somewhere off his starboard bow. Peering through one of the salon’s windows he saw a speedboat approaching, still a couple of miles away and throwing a good-sized wake. Putting his glass down, he stepped on to the foredeck for a better look. The boat held speed until it was abeam the harbor entrance buoys, then throttled down to observe the harbor’s mandated no-wake crawl. Pawley grinned; it was his man. Stepping down the boarding ladder quickly to catch the bow painter, he held the little boat’s prow snug against the ladder while the tall, bespectacled passenger, small bag in hand, clambered aboard. The small boat’s coxswain, having already put the boat in reverse, reached out to catch the painter, changed gear once again and pulled quickly away.

“Welcome aboard, young Richard; you hopped quite a taxi,” Pawley said, reaching up slightly to pat him on the shoulder.